Tag: Donald Trump

Emma Gonzalez (or maybe Stormy Daniels) for President!

Emma-Gonzalez (1)

This last weekend introduced the nation to two extraordinary women speaking about issues that concern us all, viz. presidential corruption and gun violence.

Those issues aside, what struck me about the women in question was the fact that each showed evidence of being better qualified for the oval office than its present occupant. As the latter might tweet: “Sad!”

Of course, I’m talking about Stormy Daniels and Emma Gonzalez. Stormy’s the porn star who alleges an affair with Donald Trump and a payoff by his lawyer to keep quiet. As we all know, she was interviewed on 60 Minutes last Sunday. Her responses to Anderson Cooper’s probing questions were serious, witty, and fulsome. (She also seemed to care about her young daughter, while her client seemed to lust after his own.)

Emma Gonzalez is the now-famous 17-year-old survivor of the Parkland, Florida St. Valentine’s massacre. On Saturday, she spoke out powerfully at the D.C. March for Our Lives. The highlight of her speech was an abrupt silence of more than 6 minutes to honor her schoolmates who were shot on February 14th. Those long minutes have been described as the loudest, most effective silence in the history of American oratory.

In any case, my point is that each of these extraordinary women showed herself better qualified for our nation’s highest office than its current occupant. Think about it. Ironically, both showed evidence of being:

* More thoughtful than Mr. Trump
* Smarter
* More self-possessed
* More articulate
* Better informed

Yes, that’s right. A 17-year-old high school student and a sex worker gave the distinct impression of being better qualified for “the highest office in the land” than the 70+year-old John who actually holds it.

Is there anyone out there to dispute my claim? If so, please let me hear from you.

So, maybe we should run Stormy or Emma for president. Emma would be my preference.

Granted sex workers have a special knowledge about the way men and the dominant patriarchy work. Nevertheless, their business model, like our politicians’, is based on deception, illusion, and fakery. This suggests that despite the brightness she exhibited on 60 Minutes last week, Ms. Daniels might share too much in common with dim-witted “Lyin’ Don” and most of our other “public servants.”

And don’t worry about Ms. Gonzalez’s age. Yes, according to Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, she’s less than half the age required for president. However, I’m sure we can find a way around that one.

After all, (except for the Second Amendment) Washington’s best and brightest have found their way around many constitutional obstacles without much trouble. So, while respect for the Second Amendment prevents “strict constructionists” from questioning citizens’ rights to own and use AR-15s to kill their fellow citizens, they have no trouble finding ways around:

* Initiating war by presidential fiat, despite the clear instructions of Article i, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution which reserves to Congress the right to declare war. (This has been true in the cases of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Operation Desert Storm, the Afghanistan War of 2001 and the Iraq War of 2002 — not to mention all the acts of war committed after 9/11/01.)
* Reading our mail or listening to our phone conversations in clear violation of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment
* Executing without trial U.S. citizens like Anwar Aulaqi and his son in evident contravention of the Fifth Amendment guaranteeing due process to all U.S. citizens
* Similarly discounting the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment (and the Magna Carta itself) by imprisoning indefinitely and without charge or trial both suspected terrorists and undocumented immigrants
* Disregarding Article 9, Paragraph 1, Section 8 (the “emoluments clause”) by using the office of the presidency for personal profit.

You see, Emma Gonzalez, even at 17, perceives the hypocrisy of all that. She calls them out and demands that the entire Constitution (not merely the Second Amendment) be respected. If you can “interpret” the document for the sake of fighting terrorism, excluding Mexicans, making a buck, or spying on you and me, why not interpret away the Second Amendment for the sake of protecting the lives of our children, students and teachers?

Ironically, (as I said) such questioning makes this 17-year-old more honest, smarter, better informed, and strangely more qualified than the John who calls himself Don.

So, I’ll say it again: Emma Gonzalez for president!

Which to Celebrate This Year: Easter or April Fool’s?

Gandhi:Jesus

This April 1st, I fear I won’t be able to say “Happy Easter” to anybody. I’m even thinking about boycotting the festival altogether as a cruel April Fool’s hoax.

That’s because Easter is a celebration of life’s triumph over death. Yet we “Americans,” despite the fact that 70-75% of us claim to follow the risen Christ, find ourselves immersed in a culture of death. We love it; we’re actually necrophilic. Somebody’s got to protest that.

Examine the evidence so out-of-sync with Americans’ faith claims:

* Our Religious Fundamentalist Party, the G.O.P., is engaged in all-out terrorism on God’s creation. Republicans are worse than the Taliban or ISIS. Alone in the world, they bully every creature on earth by denying human-caused climate change. Millions of humans and billions of other creatures will die as a result.
* Totally beholden to the arms industry, U.S. politicians of every stripe choose violence as their first response to most problems they face. Their remedy for school shootings? Above all, don’t adopt the common-sense policies that have worked in every other industrialized country. Instead, bring guns to school; arm kindergarten teachers!
* Rather than pursue nuclear disarmament, they tear up past agreements and modernize our overwhelming arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. (They stand willing to totally destroy North Korea for doing something similar!)
* While claiming to be pro-life, they wage a genocidal war in Yemen (and half a dozen other places) where millions of children face mass starvation and an unprecedented cholera epidemic.
* Our Commander-in-Chief proposes a military parade in D.C. that will cost up to $50 million that could be better spent on programs to help veterans needlessly traumatized by our country’s absolutely futile and endless wars.
* In fact, nothing has changed, except for the worse, since Martin Luther King identified the United States as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.

On Easter Sunday, doesn’t all of this seem ironic – and infuriating?

That’s because everything I’ve just described profoundly contradicts the Christian faith so many Americans claim as their own. Jesus was non-violent. He refused to take up arms to defend himself or his family and friends. He had no fear of death. Or rather, he overcame his fear and endured torture and capital punishment rather than take a life. Protecting himself or his loved ones by killing or sacrificing others was not Jesus’ Way. Quite the opposite.

He taught his followers the Golden Rule (MT7:12). He said we should love our enemies (MT:5:43-48). When attacked, he told his followers to put away their swords (MT26:52). In the midst of his death throes, he prayed for his executioners (LK23:34). His Easter greeting was the repeated phrase, “Peace be with you” (JN20:24-29)

Imagine if 70-75% of U.S. citizens:

* Truly accepted those teachings
* Refused to succumb to today’s necrophilia because of our faith in Jesus’ Way
* Called upon that faith to demand that President Trump sober up, stop the
bombing, and abjure permanent war that is the cause (not the solution) of the world’s problems
* From that same faith perspective, recognized the NRA, the arms industry and their political servants for the terrorists they are

A faith like that would be worth embracing; it would make a difference and bring many of us back to our faith roots.

It might allow Jesus’ followers to say (and truly mean) “Happy Easter” instead of sneering “April Fool’s!”

A Teenager Far Smarter Than Donald Trump or Marco Rubio (Sunday Homily)

emma-gonzalez

Readings for 2nd Sunday of Lent: GN 22: 1-2, 3A, 10-13, 15-18; PS 118: 10, 15-19; ROM 8: 31B-34; MK 9: 2-10

We’re all still reeling from the St. Valentine’s massacre in Parkland, Florida.

The massacre itself represented a horrendous act of domestic terrorism tolerated by the NRA-sponsored policies of the two wings of the Money Party that rule our country.

It also exemplified an act of child sacrifice that Party not only condones, but in-practice advocates as it refuses to implement common-sense gun laws prohibiting the ownership of weapons of war by U.S. citizens.

For them, the right to own AR-15s is more important than the lives of our children and grandchildren. Guns are more important than kids’ lives. Or more accurately: the millions of dollars supplied to our politicians by the NRA is more important than anything.

That’s idolatry pure and simple. It’s worship of Baal and Moloch. Politicians like Donald Trump try to rationalize it. But their “logic” comes across as ludicrous and just plain stupid. For example, did you hear what President Trump’s solution to school shootings is? Arm the teachers! (He said that with a straight face!)

But do you know who’s not fooled by such stupidity?

Our nation’s children!

Last week all across the country, high school kids were out in the streets, speaking at town meetings, and confronting their senators and even the president with common sense and wisdom far beyond that of their completely unprincipled elders. Those so-called “leaders” were absolutely shamed by the eloquence of high schoolers more than 50 years younger than, for instance, “the leader of the free world.”

Emma Gonzalez, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high, where the massacre took place, was the most impressive of all.

“We are going to be the last mass shooting,” she told the crowd. “We are going to change the law. That’s going to be Marjory Stoneman Douglas in that textbook, and it’s all going to be due to the tireless efforts of the school board, the faculty members, the family members and most importantly the students.”

And the kids followed through. They marched on Washington. They confronted the President. Their outspoken questions left Florida Senator Marco Rubio speechless as he attempted to defend his acceptance of NRA campaign funds.

There’s no question about it. Our children are more effective leaders than the country’s elected officials. Our children are standing strong against child sacrifice.

Their stand highlights the contemporary relevance of today’s liturgy of the word as it presents us with the transfiguration stories of Abraham and Jesus of Nazareth.

First of all, consider the familiar narrative of Abraham and Isaac, its rejection of child sacrifice, and how it transfigured or transformed the roots of Jewish faith.

At first glance, the text seems to praise the great patriarch for his readiness to plunge a knife into Isaac’s heart. It has God saying, “For now I know that your fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.” It’s as though Abraham’s readiness to do violence to his son were a unique proof of his faith.

Such understanding however is to forget that in ancient Mesopotamia it was required of all parents to sacrifice their firstborn sons. So despite the text’s claim, there would have been nothing remarkable about Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son. Everyone in Abraham’s culture had that sort of primitive “faith.”

Scripture scholars conclude that the words just quoted (“For now I know that your fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.”) represent an editorial addition inserted centuries after the reported event, when people no longer remembered the ancient and universal requirement of tribal gods to sacrifice the first-born of family and flock.

The editors were priests and scribes in service to Israel’s royal family. They adjusted the Abraham story to suit their employers’ needs for patriotic cannon-fodder. This explains the addition of the words indicating God’s pleasure at parents’ willingness to sacrifice their children.

In contrast to that textual adjustment, and as originally told, the Abraham-Isaac tale was about the ancient patriarch’s transfigured understanding of God. It was about his discovery of Yahweh as the God of Life who prohibited rather than required child sacrifice. [Note that even in today’s English translation, it is “God” (meaning Baal, the biblical name denoting foreign idols) who gives Abraham the order to sacrifice his son. But it is “the Lord” (meaning Yahweh, the God of Abraham) who tells the patriarch to stay his hand.]

So, Abraham’s real merit is found not in his willingness to sacrifice his son, but in his unwillingness to do so. In that sense, Abraham in this instance is like Yahweh, the non-violent God of life, who (Abraham discovers) never endorses child sacrifice. That realization should have transfigured Abrahamic faiths forever. Unfortunately, it did not.

Jesus carries on and expands Abraham’s insight. He rejects violence of any type. He is the one who said: “love one another. Love your enemies. Forgive one another. Be compassionate. Be merciful. Seek God’s reign and God’s justice. Put away the sword. Rise and do not be afraid.”

Today’s gospel about Jesus’ “transfiguration” concludes with a voice directing us to “Listen to him.”

If Americans did, our world would indeed be transfigured. We would be transfigured – totally transformed. We would lay down our arms.

In other words, Abraham and Jesus are calling us away from idol-worship – away from sacrifices to Baal, Moloch, Money, Guns and the NRA.

In the context of the Valentine’s Massacre in Parkland, Florida, the spiritual icons of Judaism and Christianity are calling us to listen to our child-leaders like Emma Gonzalez.

“This is my beloved daughter,” we are being told. “Listen to her.”

Trump’s Suicidal SOTU Rant

sawing-off-branch-sitting-on

Readings for Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time:JB 7: 1-4, 6-7; PS 147: 1-6; I COR 9: 16=19, 22-23; MK 28-39

It was like watching a man sitting high above on a tree limb sawing away at it and bragging about the quality and sharpness of his saw. I’m talking about President Trump’s first State of the Union (SOTU) message last night. It was ridiculous in its necrophilic braggadocio.

“Look how great I am,” the braggart kept repeating one way or another. I’m promoting “clean coal” and oil that will make the planet unlivable for your grandchildren. (Applause!) I’m proposing a wall in the desert to keep poor people out (instead of dykes everywhere to protect low-lying cities against rising sea levels). I’m willing to start a nuclear war that will be the end of us all. (Even wilder applause!) In the meantime, as head of the Family Values Party I have the courage and integrity to destroy immigrant and refugee families – to tear parents away from their children and send them back to countries that our great economic system has ruined. (Wildest applause of all!)

Encouraged by the cheers, the president just kept sawing away reminding everyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that his perch will soon come crashing down.

The hell of it is, however, that we’re all sitting on that branch with him.

It was Trump’s SOTU position on immigrants and refugees that was particularly offensive in the light of this Sunday’s reading from the Gospel of Mark. There the evangelist announces a theme central to his Gospel, to the teachings of Jesus, and those of Paul of Tarsus. It is that laws that don’t serve people are invalid. They should not be obeyed.

That’s the opposite of the Republican position on immigration. It puts legalism ahead of the welfare of human beings. It says: “We’re a country of laws. Those immigrants who have crossed borders illegally don’t deserve to be here. They’re ruining our country. We must send them back even if it means depriving children of their parents. Otherwise, what will become of our great legal system? Laws are sacred, (and to repeat and repeat) we’re a country of laws.”

The insanity of that positon is illustrated by comparing the GOP attitude towards laws and people with its approach to laws relative to money and products. As Robert Reich recently pointed out so eloquently, Republicans value the latter more than people. For the GOP, money and merchandise have the right to cross any border. People do not.

That’s to forget that immigration is an economic problem. Immigrants are part of a globalized labor force. They are an essential part of an economic equation that includes capital (money, factories, offices, etc.) on the one hand and labor on the other. You can’t have one without the other. Yet, as I said, capital and merchandise are allowed to cross borders regardless of their impact on people, while labor must stay put. That’s a policy that values things over human beings.

And it’s all legal, only because moneyed people in their smoke-filled back rooms say so. They confect laws to justify the whole arrangement. And they do so over the strong objections of local peasants, for instance, in Mexico who understand that “free trade” and subsidized corn entering their country from the U.S. spells the end of their incomes and way of life. The laws in question override the concerns of environmentalists and trade unionists who recognize that the “legal” trade agreements of the rich ravage their ecosystems and destroy far more jobs than they create. However, in the name of self-serving “law” created precisely by the rich and powerful, it’s all O.K.

Jesus and Paul recognized the syndrome even in the early first century. So, they both embodied in their persons and proclaimed in their teachings that laws that fail to serve human beings need not be obeyed. In fact, they should be disobeyed!

That’s the case in this morning’s Gospel reading, where Mark sets the tone for his entire Jesus narrative by having the master’s very first public act be the transgression of the Jewish Sabbath Law – the holiest of all. The theme will become central to the conflict between the scribal establishment and Jesus which Mark will centralize.

In any event, and regardless of their motivation (inspired by faith or not), the global labor force is in practice asserting with their feet their agreement with Jesus and Paul. They are insisting on their rights as indispensable parts of the economic equation. Like capital, they are crossing borders regardless of laws, walls, ICE agents, and saw-obsessed, suicidal presidents. In the end, they will not be denied.

Keep that in mind, as you read my little reflection that follows below:

Jesus very first cure,
Mark is careful to note,
Took place on the Sabbath
Which the scribes kept by rote
Without thinking at all
Of its purpose or aim
Which was to help people
Rather than blame
Them for curing the sick
Or raising the dead.
Acting like him
Fulfills the law, Jesus said.

His act of defiance
Sets a tone for Mark’s book
And sends a strong message
If we but care to look.

It says law’s invalid
If it doesn’t serve man.
It’s a tool of oppression
It’s more worthless than
The ills and the sickness,
And sins Jesus forgave.
It’s worse than our death
It’s worse than the grave.

So, in the spirit of Jesus
We must break any law
That acts like a tooth
That looks like a claw
To bite and tear mothers
Their husbands and sons
Their daughters and grandkids.
You know the ones
I’m talking about
In this day and age:
Immigrants and refugees.
It should fill us with rage
When they’re excluded from here
For breaking a law
That only serves rich men.
(That’s what Jesus saw.)

So “devout Catholic,” Paul Ryan
Should take careful note.
He’s one of those people
Thinking only by rote
About all that money
And about Wall Street stock
About what they hold sacred
Though their laws truly mock
The teachings of Jesus
About the poor and the lame
And how meeting their needs
Is the Good News he came
To announce to us all
If we choose but to hear:
From those fleeing oppression
We have nothing to fear.

The Truth Behind Mr. Trump’s Crude Metaphor

Shithole

President Trump’s done it again. He’s snatched away the patina of political correctness that normally conceals the brutal realities of a U.S. policy. His recent words about “shithole countries” say more than most imagine, not only about Haiti and Africa, but about history, colonialism, immigrants in general, and (surprisingly) about faith-inspired anti-colonial resistance. In other words, the offensive imagery is profoundly revealing and worth probing for its subconscious meaning and implications for immigration policy.

Begin by considering the operative words themselves. They were pronounced in the context of a White House meeting about immigration policy. There Mr. Trump wondered “Why do we want all these people from ‘shithole countries’ coming here?”

Such poetic metaphor suggests two meanings. On the one hand, it might imply that Haiti and Africa are somehow anal sphincters. They are orifices from which excrement exits a body. In other words, Haitians and Africans are nothing but human waste.

Alternatively, the geographical locations themselves would be places of defecation. They are toilets or outhouses. They exist to receive excrement – presumably from the likes of Mr. Trump and the country he represents. Accordingly, the countries he referenced are thereby reduced to wastelands.

Either comparison (sphincters or toilets) distorts the brutal history of colonialism. In every case that process has impoverished previously prosperous populations of countries and whole continents characterized not by poverty, but by a wealth that far outstrips that of the colonizers.

In fact, the colonial world’s wealth (three growing seasons, lavish biodiversity, rich rain forests, herds of exotic fauna, expansive acreage, abundant mineral deposits, and, in many cases, oil) are the very reasons why European and American colonists invaded them in the first place. They forced their ways in to transfer the colonies’ wealth to the “Mother Country” to feed her voracious bestial, but resource-starved industries.

In other words, rather than receptacles for receiving waste, the colonies’ function became the enrichment of the much poorer imperial centers whose conquistadors invaded and plundered them. In that sense, Europe was the shithole. As sphincter, it exuded sickly white marauders who plundered the lavish wealth of thriving black and brown indigenous peoples.

And in every case, after the Second Inter-Capitalist War (aka World War II), when the colonized rebelled to reclaim their own abundance, the colonizers intervened repeatedly to keep the stolen resources flowing to the shitholes up north – to keep in poverty those they had impoverished.

Ironically, Haiti represents a case in point. There attempts at re-appropriating stolen land and other resources have repeatedly been repulsed by foreign invaders.

Haiti’s rebellion began in 1791 shortly after the French Revolution. It was then that Toussaint Louverture led the first successful black slave rebellion – against the country’s French imperialists. Such effrontery to white supremacists has never been forgiven.

The unacceptability of blacks and browns in rebellion explains the U.S. support of the brutal Tonton Macoute under the Duvaliers (“Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc”). Their death squads were responsible for the assassinations, torture, and disappearances of thousands of Haitians from 1957 to 1986. The CIA supported them at every step.

The threat of Haitians struggling for liberation from foreign control also explains U.S. opposition to former priest and liberation theologian, Jean Bertrand Aristide. (And it’s here that the previously-mentioned connection to faith enters in.) In 1993 Aristide was elected with 67% of the vote. Aristide’s popularity and the reason for CIA opposition to his presidency is suggested by the connections the former priest made between his faith and his rejection of the U.S. rape of his homeland under the Duvaliers. In a January 1988 interview, he said “The solution is revolution, first in the spirit of the Gospel; Jesus could not accept people going hungry. It is a conflict between classes, rich and poor. My role is to preach and organize….”

Even before the 2010 earthquake (which killed 300,000 Haitians!!), Haiti’s infrastructure and social fabric were devastated by reactionary outrages against faith-inspired struggles for national control of the country’s own resources. Haitian society still reels from the policies of American clients concerned only with preserving their own wealth and cooperating fully with the foreign agendas of their D.C. puppeteers.

None of this is acknowledged by the Trump Administration, the mainstream media, our TV talking heads, or even by the leadership of the Catholic Church. Instead, everything has disappeared down the shitholes (Again, please excuse the crudeness of Mr. Trump’s metaphor) residing between the ears of those concerned.

The fact is that all colonized countries particularly in Africa have rich histories like Haiti’s.

This means that the poverty and desperation of immigrants from those places is explainable by a combination of colonialism, counter-revolution, and (very often) religious persecution.

The president’s crudeness has afforded valuable opportunity to recover all of that hidden history. It provides occasion for appropriating the memory so important to denizens of the Global South in general.

Their people are not human waste. Their countries are extraordinarily rich, not poor. Instead, both have been systematically plundered and impoverished. Our lavish lifestyles are the direct result.

Put otherwise, all of us can benefit from Mr. Trump’s vulgarity. It can lead us to flush the toilets our brains have become.

Such cleansing can reveal the real reasons that the United States must accept immigrants not only from Haiti and Africa, but from other Global South countries its policies have devastated repeatedly for so long. The immigration question is one of justice and reparation.

Flush away!

The Effing Morons Have Taken Over: It’s Time for Revolution!

Moron

Recent events have shown that our government has no legitimacy at all. None.

As a result, we should all be out in the streets every day. We should be joining a revolution in response to the incendiary words of the Declaration of Independence identifying the right and duty of citizens to dethrone abusive governments:

“. . . when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce (the People to) absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

With this posting, I’m inviting us to think about rebellion in the light of the most egregious of the “abuses and usurpations” we have been made to endure.

And here I’m not just referring to the outrageous Trump administration whose “tax reform” ignores the country’s majority and which is in the process of looting our national treasury on behalf of the already filthy rich. Just watch: they’ll soon be coming for our Social Security and IRAs.

[By the way, do you know what that tax plan represents? It’s not just a refusal to tax the rich to pay for schools, hospitals, roads and bridges – and those ridiculous wars. Rather, it’s a plan to borrow from the rich to pay for those senseless conflicts. In other words, instead of having the 1% pay for their oil wars; we’re paying them! Taxpayers borrow from the banksters to meet those “unfunded mandates,” and then PAY THEM INTEREST rather than COLLECT THEIR TAXES!! The result will be an additional $1 trillion in debt over the next 10 years. What a scam on the part of those liars who up until the Trump election were deficit hawks!]

But that’s not what I’m addressing here.

Neither am I referring to Trump’s completely arbitrary, unlawful, and severe provocation of Muslims across the world by his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Everyone knows that Zionist repression of Palestinians is the root cause of Islamic terrorism. Yet (to avoid Rex Tillerson’s more explicit designation) this effing moron is in effect inviting further 9/11s. (Remember that when the inevitable attack comes and everyone’s asking again, “Why do they hate us?”)

I’m not even referencing climate change and the ignorant decision on the part of “the most dangerous political organization in the history of the world” to unilaterally deprive our grandchildren of nature’s abundance. (Those are the words of Noam Chomsky. Regarding such despotism, he has famously said, “The party is dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction of organized human life. There is no historical precedent for such a stand.”)

No one has the right to commit such outrage.

All of those acts (and many others) should be enough to persuade us that any trace of democracy we may have once enjoyed is gone. The man in the White House and these criminals in Washington don’t represent any of us – just their club of plutocrats that includes Democrats as well as Republicans.

But even their latest acts of gross ignorance and unprecedented kleptomania are insignificant compared to their greatest outrage.

And here I get to my main point.

It involves not just the Trump administration, but all of the criminals who have run our national horror show since the end of the Second Inter-Capitalist War (aka World War II). They’ve all been terrorists and mass murderers. ALL of them: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, and now Trump.

According to Daniel Ellsberg’s new book, The Doomsday Machine: confessions of a nuclear war planner, every one of them stood ready to use nuclear weapons to incinerate 98% of the world’s population in one fell swoop. Ninety-eight percent! (Ellsberg, of course, is the most famous whistle-blower in history – the one who released The Pentagon Papers in 1971. Now his new book reveals what he learned during his stint as an insider formulating U.S. nuclear war policy.)

That policy was not just about deterrence or response to a first strike by the Soviets. It involved a policy of FIRST STRIKE now so dear to Mr. Trump’s heart. Eisenhower, for instance, was firm in his insistence that in time of crisis there could be no waiting for a Russian attack. For him (and subsequent occupants of the White House) our country had to strike first. In Eisenhower’s mind and in those of his successors, “first strike” was best and “second strike” was a distant second best. “No strike” when provoked was unthinkable.

Guided by such policy, from the early ‘50s onward, plans targeted every city of over 25,000 inhabitants in Russia and its satellites, and in China too.

The planned destruction is mind boggling.

How many people would be killed? How about 100 Holocausts – 600 million? That was the Pentagon estimate when the world’s population was 3 billion.

And it didn’t even count deaths resulting from Russian and Chinese retaliation!

Neither did it take into account the smoke and debris that would be swept up into the atmosphere blocking out the sun and causing nuclear winter. That climate change would make food production impossible and have any survivors starve to death (except perhaps about 2% of the world’s population near sea coasts that could provide mollusks and other ocean foods).

Pentagon estimates are that about 2/3 of the planet’s population would perish. Actually, (counting deaths from Russian and Chinese responses) the figure would be far closer to 3/3.

No one should have decision-making power like that. In Jefferson’s words, its arrogation by morons amounts to “abuses and usurpations” designed to reduce us all to circumstances equalling “absolute Despotism.”

But it gets worse. According to Ellsberg, no single person had the power to initiate a nuclear war. Many people did (and do) — down to the rank of Major in the field or Pacific Fleet commanders in the navy. If communication were cut off, and if those morons judge they are under nuclear attack, they have the power to respond in kind.

Is that terrifying enough for you? “Abuses and usurpations” anyone?

The fact is we are all effing morons for allowing this non-government to survive without rebellion.

So what should we do in response to such outrages? At this point, I’m not sure about particular steps. But at the very least we should

  • Throw the bums out. In 2018 truly drain the swamp. Get rid of ALL Republicans and their Democrat enablers.
  • Replace them with Bernie Progressives – with a goal of reviving the New Deal that provably raised living standards for all Americans, not just the rich.
  • Institute a special war tax to fund the on-going war on terrorism – to be increased with each new conflict.
  • Before imposing such taxes, hold nation-wide binding referenda on their advisability.
  • Stop dead our country’s nuclear weapons modernization program.
  • Begin serious world-wide negotiations for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.
  • Force Israel to honor U.N. Resolution 242, thus removing the major cause of international terrorism.

And if none of that works, make discussion of rebellion and revolution respectable again – in the name of Jefferson’s brave words. It’s our patriotic duty!

 

Trump’s Border Wall: It’s Land Theft, Exploitation & Murder Solidified in Concrete & Steel

Reagan wall

President Trump’s pledge to build a wall along the Mexican border raises two interesting questions about borders themselves and about border crossings:

  1. Why do the rich consider borders sacred when poor people cross them without permission?
  2. And why do those same rich not consider national boundaries sacred when they cross them even against international law?

First consider borders themselves. They are completely arbitrary.

I mean, in historical perspective, current demarcation lines dividing countries are totally artificial and changeable. Many of them, for instance in Africa and the Middle East, were drawn up in a field tent by basically ignorant imperial generals.

The colonial outsiders’ overriding interest was stealing the resources of the areas in question. So they formed alliances with local chiefs, called them “kings” of their new “nations,” and drew those lines I mentioned describing the area the nouveau royalty would govern.

But the colonial conquerors did so without knowledge of traditional tribal habitats, shared languages, or blood connections between families their random lines separated. As a result, from the viewpoint of the groups divided, the problem with borders is not that people cross them, but that the borders cross peoples.

Closer to home, that ironic crossing phenomenon is best illustrated in the cases of Texas, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Utah. Before 1848, all those states were part of Mexico. Then following the Mexican-American War (1846-’48), the U.S. border crossed Mexicans in those new states and they suddenly became foreigners in what previously had been their own country.

In 1848, ordinary Mexicans viewed the entire process as highway robbery. So their descendants often speak of contemporary Mexican migration to “America” as a Reconquista – a justified re-conquest of lands stolen from their forebears.

Nevertheless, 170 years later President Trump wants to solidify America’s unlawful annexation of huge swaths of Mexico by building a wall along this relatively new line of separation. His argument is that borders are sacred, and that people who cross them are “illegals” and criminal. But that just raises questions about his rich confreres’ attitude towards borders.

So let’s consider that second point.

Fact is: The rich disrespect borders in two principal ways, one “legal” and the other completely otherwise.

So-called legal border crossings are claimed as a right by international corporations. According to its free enterprise principles, Wal-Mart, for example, has the right to set up shop wherever it wishes, regardless of any resulting impact on local merchants, farmers, or suppliers. Thus capitalists claim license to cross into Mexico in pursuit of profit. They legalize their border crossing by signing agreements like NAFTA with their rich Mexican counterparts.

Meanwhile, workers (the second key factor in the capitalist equation) who are impoverished by “free trade” enjoy no similar entitlements. For them, borders are supposed to be sacrosanct, even though the boundaries prevent them from imitating the rich by serving their own economic interests – in their case, by emigrating to wherever the availability of good wages dictates.

Workers everywhere intuitively recognize the double standard at work here. So they defiantly cross borders without permission.

The other disrespect for borders on the part of the rich is more insidious. It takes the form of their own defiant transgression of international law by crossing borders to drop bombs on poor people wherever and whenever they wish, without formal declaration of war. (Imagine if poor countries claimed that right vis a vis their wealthy counterparts!) In the so-called “war on terror,” borders have become completely meaningless.

The point is that we “Americans” need to re-examine our attitudes towards borders and border walls. Borders, after all, are not sacred to the rich. Never have been. So why should rich corporatists expect workers and refugees from the wealthy’s destructive and illegal border-crossings to respect boundaries the elite have drawn so arbitrarily and violated so cavalierly?

Mr. Trump, tear down that wall!

Donald Trump: International Terrorist, Lunatic & Hypocrite

Trump @ UN

On Tuesday, (September 19th), Donald Trump delivered his first address to the United Nations. As we all know, the 42-minute speech included an unprecedented denunciation of North Korea. The president’s words were clearly aimed at intimidating not only the leadership of that country, but its impoverished population as well.

Besides blatant terrorism, there are two words for such intimidation.  One of them is absolute lunacy. The other is shameless hypocrisy.

But take terrorism first and foremost. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s definition terrorism is a federal crime embracing any act “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” By his own admission, that was the very raison d’etre of Mr. Trump’s threats: to get North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program and to retaliate for its weapons’ testing.

In his terroristic diatribe, the president claimed the right to “completely destroy” North Korea, a tiny country of 25 million on the edge of starvation. Such genocide would accomplish in an instant a holocaust at least four times as great as that perpetrated by Adolf Hitler.

Imagine being a citizen of North Korea and hearing the U.S. president’s bombast. Would you be terrified? Imagine if you were living in South Korea, as 35,000 U.S. military personnel do. Imagine if you were living in nearby Japan, where more than 40,000 U.S troops and their families are stationed. You’d be terrified.

And none of this is to mention Japanese and South Korean populations themselves, who happen to live in a region that is home to half the world’s population as well as to its largest militaries and most prosperous economies. The entire world should be petrified.

However, from the North Korean perspective, the speech represents only the latest in an endless line of such provocations long resisted by Pyongyang. The first, of course, was the Korean War itself which between 1950 and 1953 flattened the country and took nearly two million Korean lives. After that, North Korea has been the subject of endless sanctions and the target of annual war games that rehearse the country’s invasion, the decapitation of its leadership, and that actually drop dummy nuclear bombs.

Nevertheless, the Kim Jong Un regime has gone through the process of non-violent resistance. It has repeatedly presented its case to the U.N., but to no avail. Moreover, the country’s leadership has expressed a willingness to consider freezing its nuclear weapons program in exchange for a freeze on such military maneuvers on its border. The response of the United States has been complete rebuff.

No wonder Mr. Kim has defaulted to developing his nuclear weapons program. He needs no reminder of the fate of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi who terminated their similar projects under U.S. threat.

In other words, though claiming that “all options are on the table,” dialog about Mr. Kim’s non-violent alternatives to nuclear war apparently is not. Rather than talk, Mr. Trump evidently prefers bombing – even nuclear bombing – in an area of the world that hosts 83 U.S. bases, and where authorities estimate that even a conventional artillery barrage from the North would kill 64,000 in the first three hours.

Besides terrorism, there are only those other two words for describing such violence –absolute lunacy and shameless hypocrisy. The lunacy is easy to see, and needs no elaboration. The evidence increasingly shows that we are currently governed by a madman. There is no other description for someone willing to kill 25 million people rather than dialog or compromise.

As for the hypocrisy . . . how can the only country ever to use nuclear weapons, and which is in the process of completely modernizing its nuclear arsenal demand that another country discontinue its nuclear program? Even a child can understand the contradiction of demanding that others do what the demanders themselves refuse to accomplish.

(Sunday Homily) North Korea: Jesus’ Plan for De-escalation

Kim Jong-un

Readings for 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: EZ 33: 7-9; PS 95: 1-2, 6-9; ROM 13: 8-10; MT 18: 15-20 http://usccb.org/bible/readings/091017.cfm.

“Meet the Press” and other news programs were abuzz last Sunday over the apparent testing of a hydrogen bomb by North Korea. In the aftermath, President Trump not only threatened nuclear war with North Korea (again!). He also harshly criticized South Korea for proposing to engage its neighbor in diplomatic talks. The president tweeted that such proposals would be fruitless, since North Korea “understands only one thing.”

So rather than talk, the president evidently prefers bombing – nuclear bombing – in an area of the world that is home to half the world’s population as well as to its largest militaries and most prosperous economies. He’s threatening nuclear war in a region that hosts 83 U.S. bases, and where authorities estimate that even a conventional artillery barrage from the North would kill 64,000 (including South Koreans and U.S. military personnel) in the first three hours.

Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un, of North Korea (like Trumps admired “friends,” for example General Sisi of Egypt, the Saudi princes, and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines) is, no doubt a repressive dictator who cares little for human rights. However, his development of nuclear weapons and repeated shows of force are not unreasonable. After all, he is exquisitely aware of what happened to Saddam Hussein and Muamar Gaddafi after they stopped similar programs. Like all North Koreans, he recalls his people’s history that saw his country invaded and flattened by the United States during the Korean War which cost 1,316,579 North Korean lives.

Even now, President Kim also feels that his country is encircled and under severe U.S. threat and provocation. Consider how we would feel if North Korea (or Russia or China) had 83 bases in Mexico, if its ships were constantly patrolling in the Gulf of Mexico, or if it were regularly dropping mock nuclear weapons on D.C. What would Washington do under such circumstances? Yet, mutatis mutandis, the United States has been provoking North Korea in exactly these ways for years.

What then would be a proper response to North Korea’s counter-threats?

Today’s liturgy of the word gives specific directions. There, Matthew the Evangelist addresses the problem of conflict resolution. He emphasizes dialog not revenge and violence. In fact, he outlines four alternatives towards resolving disputes even like the one between the United States and North Korea. He has Jesus say that if step one doesn’t work, move on to the subsequent strategies. The four alternatives include (1) healing conversation with one’s adversary, (2) arbitration with a mediator or two, (3) consultation with the entire community, and (4) shunning the offending party.

More specifically, Matthew has Jesus say, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone . . . If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.”

Obviously, these words did not come from Jesus himself. To begin with, there was no “church” at Jesus’ time. Jesus was thoroughly Jewish and a reformer of Judaism rather than the founder of some new religion or “church.”

It was different for Matthew who was writing for a community of specifically Jewish Christians some fifty years after Jesus’ death. By then, questions of community order within the emerging church had become prominent. So Matthew invents this saying of Jesus to deal with them.

Another reason for reaching this conclusion is the reference to treating a recalcitrant individual “as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.” This phrase reflects traditional Jewish avoidance of Gentiles and hatred of Roman collaborators. It runs counter to the practice of Jesus who time and again in the Gospels causes scandal by practicing table fellowship and community with the very people Matthew’s instruction indicates are outsiders to be shunned by believers.

Were Matthew following the Spirit of Jesus, the evangelist’s instructions for addressing conflict resolution might involve the following process: (1) private dialog with one’s adversary, (2) arbitration with a mediator or two, (3) consultation with the entire community, and (4) moving in with the offending party – or at least taking them out for dinner regularly.

In any case, the emphasis in Jesus’ own approach is communion, not shunning or refusal to talk. Nowhere does Jesus’ approach say that one should refuse meeting until the offending party stops offending. Much less does the process outlined include “if he refuses to listen, kill him and his entire people.”

“But,” you object, “The words attributed to Jesus in today’s gospel selection are about church order, not about international politics, much less the irrationality embodied in Kim Jong-un. Jesus’ instruction, you might say, is about private disputes among Christians and are laughably impractical in the political sphere.

And that’s just my point. To repeat: Matthew’s account does not reflect the teaching or practice of Jesus. Jesus’ actual teaching was not confined to the private realm. His practice was highly political.

Eating with tax collectors, street walkers, lepers, Pharisees, Gentiles (including members of the Roman army) represented doing the unthinkable, the unexpected, the forbidden. . .  It meant crossing boundaries, breaking taboos, acting counter-culturally, and offending people on all sides of sizzling debates.

This is what the example of Jesus calls us to do even in the case of North Korea. Its emergence calls for departure from business as usual. It requires admission of guilt and responsibility on the part of the United States. It demands a complete reversal of “American” policy.

Today’s second reading from Paul’s letter to the Christian community at Rome puts a finer point on the reasons for such response on the part of those pretending to follow the teachings of Jesus.

Paul reminds us of Jesus’ summary of God’s law. He writes:

“Brothers and sisters: Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,’ and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.”

Emmanuel Levinas helps us understand that Jesus’ teaching on neighbor love is much more radical than commonly accepted. Loving your neighbor as yourself, Levinas says, does not mean “Love your neighbor because s/he is like you.” No, according to Levinas, it means, “Love your neighbor as yourself, because s/he is you.”

In other words, there is no meaningful distinction between you and any other human being you care to name – even if we call them “communists” or “terrorists.” Moreover, if you shared the same history as your “enemy,” you would be doing exactly the same thing that currently enrages you. As a result, no killing can be justified. It is suicide. That’s the thrust of Jesus’ words: to kill the other is to kill yourself. Killing of any kind is suicide.

What does that mean for followers of Jesus’ way in relation to North Korea? At least the following, I think:

  • Recognize and publicize North Korea’s willingness to enter dialog about a “freeze for a freeze.” That’s a reference to Kim Jong-un’s apparent willingness to halt development of his nuclear weapons program in exchange for the U.S. halting its war games off the North Korean coast and for stopping deployment of the THADD (terminal high-altitude area defense) anti-missile system in South Korea.
  • Actually enter into such dialog.
  • Freeze the U.S. nuclear weapons modernization program.
  • Discourage our children from serving in our country’s armed force that threatens the world with nuclear destruction.
  • Imagine what would happen if even a quarter of our country’s 160 million people who claim to be Christian refused the self-destruction the words of Jesus and Paul imply.

For Christ’s sake, Mr. Trump, do the unthinkable. Hard as it might be: repent. Listen to North Korea. Reverse course. How dare you threaten collective suicide!

Face It: President Trump Is Right; There Was “Violence on Many Sides”

Trump Charlottesville

Commentators on both left and right were understandably outraged by President Trump’s tepid remarks about the violence in Charlottesville last weekend. He condemned what he referred to as “violence — on many sides.”

Can you imagine his words if the driver of that car in Virginia had been Muslim?

Yet, the president’s (for once) measured response proves to be unwittingly perceptive and wise.

That’s because in Charlottesville, there was indeed violence on many sides. In fact, if we adopted President Trump’s low-key perspective, our responses to violence in any form might be similarly measured and sage. It would help us recognize that in Charlottesville only the antifa violence enjoyed any degree of justification.

Let me explain.

Violence is never one-dimensional. As Dom Helder Camara, the sainted Catholic archbishop of Recife in Brazil, pointed out years ago, in most cases, there is a predictable “spiral of violence” that is often overlooked. It involves structures, self-defense, police response, and sometimes terrorism on the part of individuals and (most often) the state.

Consider Charlottesville; it clarifies by representing every turn of the spiral.

In the eyes of African-Americans, the statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee represents the structural violence of slavery and white supremacy. Such institutionalized violence is invisible to most white people. However, the alt right reaction to the statue’s removal finally rendered monument’s real institutionally violent meaning unmistakable. It represents white nationalism, and not “southern pride” after all. As a result, nationalists’ march was itself an act of institutionalized violence.

That violent assertion of white supremacy led to a second level of violence on the part of African-Americans and their allies. When their peaceful protest was attacked by the white nationalists, the protestors defended themselves – yes, violently. Archbishop Camara identified such self-defense (against institutionalized cruelty) as virtually the only form our culture recognizes (and typically condemns) as violence. And yet, it is perhaps, the only justifiable type. Everyone has the right to self-defense.

The third level of violence entered when the Charlottesville police “stood down” in the face of the mayhem taking place before their eyes. Usually, police (third level) response simply restores the violent status quo ante. Ironically, however, in the case of Charlottesville, it was police inaction that represented Dom Helder’s third level of violence.  Their standing-down facilitated the alt right attacks.

Finally, in Charlottesville last weekend, there was the terroristic violence of the Nazi sympathizer and Trump supporter who murdered Heather Heyer and injured many others when he plowed his car into those demonstrating against the institutionalized violence represented by white supremacists. That’s the fourth turn in the “spiral of violence.” In the case of Charlottesville, such terrorism too was aligned with violence’s structural form.

Unfortunately, the driver’s terroristic expression might soon be institutionalized itself as states like North Carolina are on the verge of granting motorists the legal right to run over protestors who might be blocking traffic. In that case, an individual’s terroristic act would be transformed into state terrorism, which happens to be terrorism’s most common incarnation as seen, for example, in drone killings, torture, and threats of nuclear war.

So, as you can see, the president was right. Violence is indeed many-sided. Applying Trump’s Principle of Understanding might well make him and all of us much more thoughtful and cautious in responding to tragedies like Charlottesville last week. It would always prompt us to examine context and make crucial distinctions. It would help us recognize that of all forms of violence, only the second (self-defensive) level has any hope of justification at all.

Violence is a powerful word. President Trump inadvertently reminds us that we should be careful in its use and in any actions it might inspire.